Playful Design in a complex world
We design playful participation tools for our public and digital spaces, our civic processes, and our wicked problems.
From reimagined futures to alternative infrastructures, we design for collective imagination and play - to help people ask better questions of the world around them.
How?
An invitation to participate could be a beautiful, crafted piece of magic somewhere in a neighbourhood.
Or it could be an tech interface that helps people makes sense of the complexity of their world.
Whatever it is, our core methodology is to create fun things that give people agency to explore.
As artists, we embed ourselves into communities and make work alongside them and in response to them. Folklore, wood, light installations, sensors- our materials and methods are led by context and conversations in the community.
Craft
Pro-social, collaborative, real world games are our heritage. As game designers, we design for agency: giving people the tools to explore complex ideas and systems, collaboratively.
Agency & Play
As developers, we work in partnership with academia, the social sector, and engagement professionals to build technologies that help communities of practice grapple with real world problems.
Technology
Projects
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![Understory network map]()
Understory
Understory, an action research project into community adaptation and imagination delivered by our non-profit arm, Parlour.
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![A node map overlay on a GIS map]()
Happenings
Getting young people’s voices heard in Planning and the Built Environment.
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Gathering Hope
A crafted object designed to gather and reflect the collective hopes and dreams of a community.
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This City Stinks
A street game about climate breakdown and adaptation for 18-30 year olds.
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Relational Mapping Toolkit
The Relational Mapping toolkit is a mapping and community building tool for communities of practice and purpose.
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![A woman looks over her shoulder. There is a red box around her face, implying that her face is being digitally processed.]()
Nothing To Hide
A cross-the-city game about public space surveillance.
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![A man in a white suit stands with a loudspeaker, overseeing a water fight in the street.]()
Labs & Festivals
Labs & Festivals we have run over the years
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Simple and intuitive, the Relational Mapping exercise has enabled us to visually represent, and understand, the outcomes of MyWorld investments across the West of England and beyond.
Mark Leaver
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An end of project report doesn't help you to design for better programme outcomes. We're looking forward to working collectively and transparently with our grantees, using the maps to explore how we can better target resources and initiatives across the life of the programme - building the community as we go.
Emma Cox
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Working with FIC is a glorious mixture of joyful playfulness, skilful expertise and reassuring capability. They listen to the stories we tell of our place with a quality of thoughtfulness that is full of possibility, and enable an abundance of ideas for playful participatory interventions. Crucially though, their care around co-production, delivery and management, as well as nurturing strong relationships with those they work with is rare and inspiring.
Sally Lowndes, Georgie Grant
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Free Ice Cream’s shared fascination with connection, behaviour and a deep desire to support the world to be a better place has meant that play is always tantamount, process is trusted and principles are solid. Features and products have emerged through our exploration with participants, with Free Ice Cream listening, observing and questioning with curiosity and care. Their generosity and flexibility is valued.
Malcolm Hamilton
Clients
IGLAB
IGLAB - our games play testing lab founded in 2008 and currently housed in our studio in Berlin.
IGLAB is where we develop the play mechanics and technologies that inform our larger projects.
Also hanging out and playing is more important than ever.